Last Quadrant

by Meira Chand

  Swinging his arms to the chandelier on the ceiling, he thought of the changes he had seen in the club. Before the war it had been inconceivable to think of women here, bouncing about energetically; it had been a men’s club. Even his own scanty attire would not have been tolerated, for ties and coats had been de rigueur. Only, he remembered, during the great flood, when the club was under water, had word been quietly passed that shorts were permitted during the emergency. But hats were still essential and they kept their sun helmets on. Topees were the mark of the old-timer, setting wearers apart from new arrivals.

  On the committee of the club, Arthur organised the sports facilities. Now, in retirement, he gave himself to it wholeheartedly. Recently he had tried to resurrect The Ancient Order of Mountain Goats, a select but obsolete fraternity of walkers in the first quarter of the century, who had roamed the Kobe hills. New goats nowadays were not easily enticed. The Harriers, which Arthur also supported, with their energetic paper chase, bawdy songs and beer, clearly held the upper hand. The club’s Ancient Order of Mountain Goats was sadly no more than two stoic Lieutenant Goats, and a third commanding member, The Bell Goat, Arthur.

  ‘Up, Mrs Williams. Up, Mrs Brown.’ The honky-tonk music of the tape recorder struck faster in the ballroom. In black leotards the two rows of women kicked out their legs like a straggling loose-thighed chorus line. Arthur shot out orders and the women jumped to obey, panting and shiny with sweat. Before them Arthur turned the exercise into graceful fluid movements, and afterwards the women crowded round him, laughing and envying. He enjoyed their feminine attention and his Friday morning was pleasantly passed.

  But the afternoon stared at him the moment he entered his home. He passed his old sun helmet, hanging in memory of former times, from the antler of a deer head in the hall. Because of the rain and a virulent virus that had claimed most of his troop, the weekend Boy Scout camp on the slopes of Mount Maya had been abandoned unexpectedly. He had planned it to fill the days looming ahead. He was secretly terrified of smaller children, but older boys he enjoyed. He had looked forward to the camp, to the smell of earth when he woke in a tent, to tin mugs of burnt cocoa and charred potatoes baked in the embers of a fire. And the boys with their uniforms and quick hands and minds, returned him to his own scouting days. Only the size of his uniform differed in the troop.

  He made a cup of coffee and sat down at his desk, and turned his mind back to the history of the club. He wrote a heading for the first chapter.

  ‘Growth of the Foreign Settlement: By evening of that first day in Kobe Port, rows of canvas shanties had been erected on the Concession ground, while a few Japanese houses had been taken over and were already in full swing as grog shops. So that, long before dark, this peaceful Japanese town was converted into a place where hell seemed to be let loose, with Japanese and Europeans rolling about drunk, fighting, bawling and chasing women ...’ Arthur copied carefully from a book entitled, Links in My Life on Land and Sea, written by an early English traveller.

  Rain spat lightly on the window. In the garden the topiary bushes of holly and privet gleamed wetly, like large one-legged metal birds. He saw the belt of rain coming towards him off the bay, it veiled the town, then quickly the hill. He watched it touch the garden, thrusting noisily between branches and leaves. A damp praying mantis climbed the window through crystals of rain. He observed its fleshy underside, like a fat green pod of peas.

  On the corner of his desk the fragments of vase, broken yesterday, made a neat stony pile. He had not thrown them away. Looking at them he remembered and it seemed even now his bones would melt again. I shall die, he had said. I shall die. He remembered his words so long ago, for his mind had burst with light. But she had only laughed and bent to touch his body. Kyo.

  About him the house dripped morosely, filled with stagnant smells of drains and mould and rotted wood, the solitary remnants of bachelorhood. I should have married, he thought, I should have had children. For what is there left and who will care? It will be like Spencer. He shook himself at once. For these were the thoughts that buried Spencer, these were the shoes without laces, the mangy dog, the braces buttoned with safety pins. He, Arthur, was not a man to give in so quickly. And besides, he had History and Spencer had not. He picked up his pen and began to write, and the woman, Kyo, was there in his mind again. He sighed and sipped his coffee, for what good did it do to remember, and determinedly bent his head to his work again. Outside, the rain dripped on.

  14

  Akiko turned her face up to the light rain and ran ahead of Daniel on the beach. The wind followed, rushing down stone passages between concrete ballasts, heaped up as a breakwater against the sea wall. Something new in her ebbed and flowed; she was one with the sky and the sea and the rain. The wind took hold of her hair, slapping it about her eyes. She had woken that morning and seen the swollen rain-filled sky, and the pale undersides of leaves stirring restlessly in the trees. Overnight the season had changed. Later they had come down together to the beach.

  ‘It’s so ugly,’ Akiko told him. ‘There used to be sand before they put all that concrete down. There is only somewhere to walk because the tide is out. Once it was nice. Eva and I used to walk here often.’

  He nodded, agreeing, seeing the ugly dredging works, the modern fishing pier and the monstrous triangular concrete ballasts piled up in a wall behind him.

  ‘Those are oyster beds,’ Akiko pointed. ‘It used to be nice: the sea, the sand and the oyster beds. And that’s the Coopers’ house. They’re important people here, amongst the foreign community.’ Akiko pointed to a house some way down the beach, set back across the road on its own. A high stone wall and the dull gleam from its copper roof was all that could be seen.

  Akiko turned and began to run. The gritty shingle pressed between her toes, the crash of the waves rushed in her ears. The salty spray stung her face and left the taste of brine on her lips. The dark shapes of ships dotted the sea, the sky was like slate, with clouds moving quickly across it. She shouted behind her to Daniel. Wind ripped the voice off her lips and flung it aside. She clutched an umbrella, holding it high above her head against the drizzle. There was something special within her since yesterday, since he had told her those secret things, thrust up from the darkness of his mind. Things he had told nobody else.

  Turning, she saw him coming towards her, bent and battling against the wind, his jeans rolled up his legs, bare feet wet and gleaming. He carried his shoes in his hand, socks stuffed into them. The black umbrella was lopsided and flopping upon its broken rib. Soon he was there beside her, and she smelled the damp of his shirt and felt the warmth of his breath on her face.

  ‘There are still a few old rocks left, that I always used to climb over.’ She led the way to the smooth flat slabs of stone and sat down. In her mouth was the taste of salt; the wind whistled in her ears. He stood above her, silently looking down. The wind came at them fiercely in a sudden flurry, and his umbrella blew inside out and flapped like an old black crow. He stood helplessly beneath it, his hair moving wildly about his face. She laughed and together they pulled the old umbrella back upon itself. At their feet an empty sardine tin and the remnants of a towel waited for the tide.

  ‘There’ll be no more summer after this,’ she said, looking at the wide sweep of it all. A wave gathered seething along its crest, and crashed upon the shingle. A small boat lifted and rocked, tethered to a stump of wood. And she thought already, what shall I do when he is gone? For it was, even then, unthinkable. Something unravelled within her, something immeasurable and slow, like a great spreading shadow that grew and grew. So that she closed her eyes and dared to say it, because there was nothing to lose, nothing before her, and behind only unbending shapes of her own life.

  ‘It will be strange when you are gone.’ In the words she saw her own reflection, dark and obscure, like a shape in old glass.

  ‘I’ll be here for a while. I shan’t go away so soon.’

  ‘I ... I just mean, it will be
lonely. I don’t often have someone to talk to, like this.’

  ‘You must have friends?’ he said.

  ‘Not really. There is Eva, of course. And the orphanage, the work, we’re so busy always. There never seems time for much else. The foreigners, they come and go here. Nobody stays long enough for a friend. And the Japanese, well ...’ In her mind was the crumble of something decayed and old. How could she explain, the hot skewered rice cakes, the empty desk, the child with flaxen braids? It was nothing he would understand. The forms in her life were stiff and still, and yet she wished to tell him, those things she had not spoken of. She wished to give as he had given, the dark contraction of her spirit.

  ‘It is difficult here, as it is nowhere else, for somebody like me ... being half American, half Japanese.’

  ‘There are plenty of people like you in the world. Why should it raise difficulties, emotional divisions maybe, but otherwise you’re lucky. You sit on the fence, you belong to both sides.’ He looked at her gently.

  But she ached in the silence between the things she wished to unfold. ‘In Japan it is different. You are here just a few days, what could you know? How can I explain?’ She turned to him earnestly, her face thin in the gritty, windy morning. ‘The Japanese feel themselves a race apart. This you must understand. I love Japan. I was born here of a Japanese mother. I have grown up here. And in spite of Eva I feel Japanese. The mirror tells me so each morning. I see my eyes, I see the shapes that make myself. I want to be Japanese. But I am not and never can be, because there is no place for me here. In the eyes of the Japanese I am an unthinkable adulteration; I do not belong to them. They have told me so in many ways, again and again.’ She turned from him and looked at the phosphorous sea, her face still.

  ‘And I understand their point of view. It is not discrimination, as any Westerner would immediately say. It is simply a fact of Japanese life. The foreigner is always the foreigner, the Japanese is always a Japanese. And knowing that it is unthinkable they should accept me, I am not bitter. I cannot say this is right and this is wrong. There is simply the Japanese way of thought and other ways of thought. But it makes me sad, for I feel very much alone. If it was not for Eva I don’t know what would have become of me. I am one of the lucky ones. After the war there were many like me, but we have grown up. In some unhappy way this country has absorbed us. Most of the children I grew up with in the orphanage were of mixed blood but, in spite of education, they have been able to get no more than menial work. Eva tried hard for them all, but even to get them those jobs was an achievement. Some went for adoption to the States, and they are happy there, I know. One or two studied very well, but even with qualifications they are rejected here. Now there is a crop of children from international marriages. The Japanese study and travel abroad these days, which was not allowed before. So there are marriages, and children again. They are not orphans, and their social standing is much better than mine, they don’t face the same kind of rejection. And yet it is there still. They are regarded as interesting curiosities, mostly they go to international schools, and take their non-Japanese side and are absorbed abroad again.’

  ‘But Japan is very much part of today’s world. It must adapt, change?’ he asked. But she shook her head.

  ‘The whole history of Japan is a history of isolation. They were never invaded until the last war. The very structure of society here is a protection against change. Everything may seem modern and westernised, but it’s superficial. Socially, things have not changed as much.’ She was empty now she had told him. She did not often speak at such length or with such emotion.

  ‘You should come to America, you would be accepted for yourself there. Eva should have brought you long ago,’ Daniel told her.

  ‘In all the years she has only been once or twice herself, as you know. She is too absorbed here, nothing else matters to her. She brought back a photo of you once, she has it on her dressing table. I used to look at it when I was young, and dream all kinds of dreams, about my father, about America.’

  ‘But you should come.’

  ‘I’m not adventurous, in spite of all my dreams. America to me is an unknown place. What would I do there? It frightens me.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, but her face was serious and moved him.

  ‘Sometimes I think what if anything ever happened to Eva, what would I do here then? Would I even want to stay? I dare not tell Eva but, as much as I love her and the children and enjoy the work, I am not filled with the same dedication Eva is. I grew up in the orphanage, it is all I have known. Yet sometimes it all comes down on top of me. I don’t feel I can stay there the rest of my life. But I should be ashamed to tell Eva of the things I dream of: music, laughter, just movement and ... life. All the things Eva has no time for. Sometimes on the television there are pictures of people, singing and dancing. I wish I could go out and join them. They are people like me, my age. But even if I could I wouldn’t know how. It is like an affliction in me.’ She looked down at her hands.

  ‘What of your mother? Do you know anything about her?’ he asked gently.

  She was silent, staring at her hands, yet he saw the flicker in her face, like a ripple in clear water. She shook her head.

  In spite of herself Akiko felt the nearness of Daniel then, like a sharp, sweet ache in her bones. He placed a hand on her shoulder, turning her gently around. Before him her face did not move. For a moment the beating wings of a bird overhead parted the wind and rain. He bent to kiss her then.

  15

  They walked back in silence. There was both nothing and too much to speak of. Coming towards them down the hill people bent against the weather; in deep gutters each side of the road was the noisy swill of rainwater. They pushed their open umbrellas before them up the hill. Daniel stopped beside her then and took her arm, and together they walked on.

  She remembered the letter again, and shut her eyes, gripping Daniel’s arm tightly. On her lids was the comfort of the rain, beside her he was warm and sure. He bent towards her, sensing she was bothered by something. His hair was damp on his forehead, damp and flat and very near her own, one brow arched with beads of rain. He pressed her arm in silent question, and barely caught her voice above the swirl of wind.

  ‘She said, “Sometimes I like to hope you think of me”.’

  ‘Who said that?’ he asked.

  ‘My mother.’ She released it in a breath and knew at last she had shared that iridescent fragment of a word. ‘I had a letter from her. Soon I shall tell you about it. But not now.’

  Daniel placed an arm about her shoulders and they walked on, silent, their umbrellas locking sometimes before them against the rain.

  Through the day the wet fell on leaves and stones, until they were polished and smooth. The wind continued restlessly, tossing about like an irritable sleeper. In the orphanage the electric light shone above the younger children, back from nursery school, as they folded origami paper cranes. Akiko slid her nail along the creases of magenta paper, opening wings, moulding a beak, directing short, clammy fingers on which glue curled in a grimy skin, daubed with coloured inks.

  Against the dark sky the windows of the orphanage were sodden. Outside, the spiked fingers of a palm swayed and dipped. At three-thirty Akiko handed over to Eiko Kubo and went to Eva’s office. They were waiting for her there with mugs of tea and thick slices of raisin cake. Sister Elaine stood by Eva, who was seated at her desk.

  ‘I am afraid I cannot agree,’ Sister Elaine said, as Akiko entered the room. ‘I know how you feel, I share your hope and constant optimism. But this is quite monstrous. We cannot allow it. First Mrs Cooper and now this.’

  Eva was silent. She pursed her lips and did not reply. Sister Elaine continued. ‘That Kenichi ...’ Sister Elaine crossed herself quickly. ‘I feel it my duty to say, I think that child is a dangerous element in our orphanage.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Akiko asked, sitting down beside Daniel, who addressed a letter on his knees.

  ‘Do? He ha
d a fight with Nobuo. He pushed him downstairs, I saw it. Nobuo was concussed. I have just returned from the hospital with him. Yesterday he bit me, look,’ Sister Elaine thrust out her wrist on which lay a small bud of broken skin. Her cheeks were pink and behind her, rain drummed on the windows.

  ‘He’s like a bit of taut string. The others were teasing him, I believe,’ Eva said quietly. She looked at Sister Elaine in a worried way. ‘We must give him more time. Most of the children here come from very disturbed circumstances, as you know. We must show patience, we must win their trust. Unfortunately, there is always the risk, in a house full of children, of an accident such as today’s.’

  ‘Well, I am afraid I can do nothing more with him. He has locked himself into the lavatory, and will not come out. He has been there three hours, since the time of Nobuo’s fall,’ Sister Elaine replied stiffly.

  ‘I’ll go after my tea. Don’t worry, Sister Elaine.’ Eva watched the woman nod curtly and leave.

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken him, perhaps she is right. But somehow I felt ...’ Eva trailed off uncommunicatively. There was something the matter with Sister Elaine. Eva saw it there in her voice and eyes, something compressed and deep. She looked at the square of dark window, reflecting bars of light and their faces. Beside her the telephone rang. She heard the voice, but there was nothing she could do. ‘Akiko.’

  The wire stretched short and tight between them, Akiko pulled her chair forward to reach it. But she knew even before she heard the voice, before the words uncoiled, one by one in her head, for she had been waiting. She knew that now.

  ‘You will find the address easily. Between the Shinseiki Cabaret and the Ikuta Shrine. I would not ask you ... but I am ill ... Akiko ...’